Racing tightens on day 4 of 2024 ORC World Championship

A delayed start to wait for wind today still yielded two more windward-leeward inshore races at the 2024 ORC World Championship held at the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court. With five inshore races completed, the scorelines now have one discard applied, resulting in even closer points margins on the leaderboard in some classes.
 
Racing in the short 1-hour courses was once again extremely close, with some new winners emerging in the race results. Class 0 is still being dominated by Victor Wild’s TP52 Fox 2.0, but in Race 6 they fell to 4th place behind David Team’s TP52 Vesper in first, followed by Andrew Berdon’s TP 52 Summer Storm having their best race yet in second by 26 seconds, and only 2 seconds back Jon Desmond’s Pac 52 Final Final in third. Behind Fox are four boats tied on points for second.
 
Similarly, Austin & Gwen Fragomen’s Botin 44 Interlodge IV continues to dominate Class A with a 9-point lead, even with a 3rd place in the first race today that was 46 seconds behind race winner Tio Loco, Henry Brauer’s first race win on his Club Swan 42, and 35 seconds behind Don Thinschmidt’s Ker 43 Abracadabra (above, USA 4304).
 
“We’re pretty pleased with things so far,” said Abracadabra tactician Brad Boston. “We have a new rig we’re getting used to, new sails, and not much time in the boat as a team compared to our rivals, so we feel like we’re improving every day.”

Class B leader Marcin Sutkowski’s Grand Soleil 44 Wind Whisper 44 from Poland also continues to dominate the top of that class’s leaderboard, but fell to 5th place in the first race, with Linda & Andrew Weiss’s Italia 11.98 Christopher Dragon XII (at left) taking their first race win by a narrow 7 second margin over Bill & Jackie Baxter’s J/111 Fireball in second.

With the discards applied, this leaderboard in this class is the tightest of all: only 0.5 points separate the Polish team from the current runner-up, John Brim’s Italia 11.98 Rima98.

The Maxi class also enjoyed two windward-leeward races today, with Jim Swartz’s Maxi 72 Vesper continuing its winning ways with a 19-second win over Hap Fauth’s Maxi 72 Bella Mente in the first race but both teams falling to Temptation (at right) in the second race. The JV66 owned by Art Santry/Oakcliff scored this win by a razor-thin 2-second corrected time margin over Vesper.

On the racing schedule for tomorrow for the ORC Worlds classes is another distance race, but this time of just day-long duration. The exact course and course length is being considered by the Race Committee this evening and will be announced in the morning. Like the Long Distance Race that opened this event, this race will not be discardable from team scorelines.

Racing in the 2024 ORC World Championship and Maxi North American Championship will wrap up with more buoy racing on Saturday. The event will conclude with an awards ceremony Saturday evening.